


The Life and Times of Jack Kelly

by Boniface



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, This is sad guys, be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boniface/pseuds/Boniface
Summary: This is the story of how Francis Sullivan died and how Jack Kelly was born.





	The Life and Times of Jack Kelly

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of what will hopefully become a series of vignettes exploring the childhood of Jack Kelly but it may stay a very short one shot for some time...

Sickness hung in the air like fog, thick and impenetrable. Francis could hardly breathe both from the rancidness of the room and the pain in his chest. Every breath was like a battle that kept the six-year-old boy flat on his back staring at the ceiling. It was perhaps the first time in his life he was ever that still. Mama said that he’d come out ready to take on the world.

Mama was lying next to him in the bed, in fitful sleep. Francis had always thought his mother was the prettiest lady in all of New York, in all of the world. Maybe even prettier than the angels in heaven. Now though she looked so much older than her twenty-six years. She was clammy and red in the face. The skin under her eyes was the color of the bruises that she had always kissed on Francis’s knees; the rest was wet and shiny. Her golden hair was slick with the same feverish sweat. It looked dirty and dull as straw.

Every now and then she gave hitched breath or a whimper that made Francis’s heart clench. He rolled onto his side with all the energy he had and wrapped his small skinny arms around his mother’s chest. He pillowed his head on her shoulder. Mama moved, just barely. Her eyes were fluttering open just so. He couldn’t even see their emerald green color through her eyelashes.

“Jack?” Francis’s mother said in a raspy voice. Her lilting accent sounded like the wrong notes in the middle of a pretty song. 

“Dada’s not here, Mama,” Francis informed her. Jack was his father’s name but his father hadn’t been home in weeks. Then he’d smelled like whiskey and lemon verbena. Mama’d shouted at him. He’d hit her hard across the face and then he’d ran out. Francis watched it all from underneath the bed. The bruise on Mama’s face had faded and Dada hadn’t returned.

“Jackie,” Mama said and this time she smiled. It seemed to take a lot of work for her to smile.

“No, Mama,” Francis protested feebly. “It’s me, Francie,” He clung tightly to her. He wanted the stories she told every other time he was sick. He wanted Jesse James, Billy the Kid. He’d take his mother’s favorites Finn McCool, Cú Chulainn, even Deirdre of the Sorrows now. He would have listened intently.

Everything around him was hot and sticky. Mama was too warm. The air was too warm. Francis was swimming it, drowning in it. 

This is what death feels like, little Francis thought. He was going to heaven now. He thought about Mama and Jesus and God and everything he had been taught in Sunday school. He would okay dying because Mama would be there with him.

Each struggling breath, he thought would be his last and soon the world grew dark. 

Francis did not die. He only slipped into a deep sleep. During his sleep his fever broke. When he woke again he was curled up on a neighbor’s armchair and Mama wasn’t anywhere to be seen.


End file.
